The present invention relates to a device for testing contacting and/or wiring of sockets arranged in an array on a circuit board, especially for testing contacting of sockets for electronic cards, the device having a housing that is provided with parallel first guiding elements connected to oppositely arranged inner side walls of the housing and being spaced at a certain grid distance from one another. The device further comprises at least one testing adapter connected to an evaluation circuit and coordinated with respective sockets to be tested. The testing adaptor is comprised of a flat casing having at its forward end a testing head which is preferably exchangeably connected. The casing is provided with second guiding elements on its longitudinal narrow sides such that the first and the second guiding elements are slidably connected for moving and attaching the testing head to the sockets in order to establish electrical contact.
In today's microelectronics technology, it is known and common practice to provide an array of sockets in a plurality of rows, for example, in order to be able to attach thereto so-called electronic cards in a contacting manner. One commonly encountered problem is that after arranging the sockets on the circuit board it is uncertain whether the contacting and/or wiring has been effected properly. For this reason, it is necessary to perform an electrical tests.
A known testing device comprises a number of testing adapters which corresponds to the number of the sockets to be tested. The testing adapters are comprised of a casing having at their forward end a testing head connected thereto in an exchangeable manner. In order to reduce the length of the leads between the testing head and the measuring device, the switching electronics is integrated into the casing of the testing adaptor. Alternatively, it is also possible to provide the casing only with the wiring while the switching electronics is provided externally. The testing head comprises respective pins or spring contacts and is attached to the respective socket via these pins or spring contacts in order to carry out the required test. For this purpose, a housing corresponding to the circuit board with the array of sockets is provided. The housing has parallel guiding grooves provided at oppositely arranged inner side walls. The guiding grooves are spaced from one another at a certain grid distance. Due to the respective division, a continuous grid is created. Corresponding to the guiding grooves at oppositely arranged inner side walls of the housing are longitudinal ledges provided at the testing adaptor in the area of the longitudinal narrow sides. Via these ledges the testing adaptor is insertable into the guiding grooves of the housing. Since the guiding grooves form a grid, the positions of the testing adapters are adaptable to different circuit boards to be tested.
The disadvantage of this known testing device lies in the fact that in order to be able to displace the testing adapters for an adaptation to a different circuit board to be tested, these testing adapters must be completely removed and pulled from the guiding grooves of the housing and must be repositioned at respective new positions. This is disadvantageous because cables are arranged at the upper end of the testing adaptor which make the removal of the testing adaptor more difficult and cumbersome. A further disadvantage of the known testing device is that the testing adaptor can only be displaced by the given grid distance. This grid distance, which is defined by the guiding grooves at the housing, however, may not be reduced to a very small distance because otherwise the protrusions between the guiding grooves are too thin to provide sufficient stability.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to improve the known testing device such that in a simple manner a testing adaptor may be newly positioned.